Lunar Ark Planned

Universe Today examines a proposal for a "Lunar Ark" that would place a substantial body of knowledge on the moon as a repository should some disaster befall our planet.

"Having a backup of your computer is handy, but having a backup of the entire progress of human civilization is even more practical. If a major catastrophic event like nuclear war or an asteroid strike wipes out most of the humans on the planet, it would be helpful for the survivors to have a record of all the accomplishments we've made in the past few thousands of years to help rebuild and repopulate the Earth."

There are already "seed arks" being developed in different areas on our planet committed to maintaining a record of our diverse ecology. The proposal for the Lunar repository would include not only records of plant life, but also include information on animals and human techniques such as smelting metals or how to plant crops. The idea would be for the information stored to be available from earth based "lifeboat" facilities scattered across the planet where survivors of a cataclysm would be able to congregate.

Interesting idea, although a better (although much more difficult) one would be to simply colonize whatever available real estate we can survice on within the solar system, say Mars.